Ординатура / Офтальмология / Английские материалы / An instrument in Gods Hand_Vaughan_1999

An Instrument in God’s Hand

With Ruth, Geri, and friend, in a Jerusalem restaurant.

private walls everywhere we turned. It was like a maze of walls with periodic locked gates. There were no people around, no shops anywhere. We were lost. We tried to find our way back to the busy section of the city, but everywhere we turned more silent walls presented themselves.

By this time the sun was going down, and we were beginning to get a bit concerned that we might have to spend the night in the street, leaning against a wall. We started asking the Lord to help us find our way out of the maze of narrow streets.

As we prayed we kept walking in the growing dusk, until we finally saw an elderly man approaching. He had something rolled up in a newspaper under his arm. We had no idea if he spoke English or not, but we were compelled to try to communicate with him. We asked him what part of the city we were in.

Thank God the gentleman understood the question and told us

90

The Jerusalem Connection and My First Trips to China

that we were in the Armenian section. Geri, being a very gregarious person, asked him if he knew Demos Shakarian, the founder of the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship, the only Armenian she knew. To our amazement, he said he did know of Mr. Shakarian. This opened the door for him to tell us that he was a Christian, and he proceeded to invite us to come to his home and meet his wife.

We followed this man to a small, humble home, where his wife demonstrated the local hospitality by proceeding to serve us rolled oats with cinnamon and a little sugar.

The most prized possession in the little house was an old upright piano, which neither of them played. It was carefully covered with a nice cloth. When they learned that Geri was a pianist, they asked her to play for them. Glory rolled out of that old piano as she played, and tears came to their eyes at the joy of having music in their home for the first time in many years. God blessed them and blessed us through that meeting within the maze of walls in the Old Armenian Quarter of Jerusalem.

Before we left his house that night this gentleman told us of a meeting being held in the church known as St. Peter-en-Gallicantu by an American lady from Virginia. He invited us to go there the following Friday night, and we said we would. We had no idea that we were about to begin a whole new chapter of our lives.

When we arrived at the church that Friday night, promptly at 7:00 p.m., many people were already there, and they were dancing in front of the altar and singing joyfully. Not one person was sitting back in the pews. We had never been in a church service like this, and we really did not know what to do. We just stood quietly in one of the pews, watching what was happening.

Before long, one of the believers came over to us and invited us to join the group, so we went to the front and started dancing with the others. They were doing line dancing and circle dancing, and they were singing what we later learned to be the “new song.” Some-

91

An Instrument in God’s Hand

Walking where Jesus walked. The Roman road leading to the place where our Lord was mocked and beaten.

one in the group would receive a song spontaneously from the Lord and begin to sing it. These “new songs” were always simple enough that we could all catch on to them quickly and sing together.

Then another person would get a second verse to the same song or perhaps they would get another “new song” from the Lord, and again everyone would join in. This spontaneous singing and dancing went on for a full hour, with no apparent leader except the Holy Spirit.

As everyone began to sit down, a tall lady came over to me and said, “Haven’t we met before?”

I had never seen her before in my life, so I told her no, we hadn’t. She looked at me intently and said, “I’m sure we have met before.”

92

The Jerusalem Connection and My First Trips to China

Again I told her we had never met.

Persistent in her belief that we had met, she looked at my face carefully and then said, “I remember! I saw you on the Phil Donohue Show when I was in America.” Sure enough, I had been on the Phil Donohue Show with Rev. R.W. Schambach, verifying a miracle God had done on a man who had lost his eye. That she had remembered a stranger’s face from a single television show was a great miracle, but I was to learn that this woman was surrounded by the miraculous.

She introduced herself as Ruth Heflin, head of the Mt. Zion Fellowship, based in Jerusalem. She asked me if I would speak at their church on Mt. Zion the next day, which was the Sabbath. Still in a stunned state because of this series of strange events, I accepted the invitation. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Ruth.

The next morning the Lord told me to speak about “walking on the water” (i.e., walking by faith), which I had had abundant practice in doing over the preceding years. Immediately after the service, Ruth graciously thanked me for coming and then scurried away to take care of some important business. Months later I learned just what that important business was.

The fellowship had a team of people ready to go into China. They had been waiting in Hong Kong and Los Angeles for several months, unable to get visas. They were running out of funds, and Ruth needed to make an immediate decision about whether or not to bring them home. She had prayed fervently, asking God to give her a definite word through me that Sabbath morning about what to do concerning China. The strong word that had come forth was “walk on the water,” so she acted immediately on this word and bought herself a ticket to fly to Hong Kong via Los Angeles on the next flight leaving Israel. In faith, she was believing that God would open the door for the team to enter China.

The Lord had told Ruth, “On Thanksgiving Day, you will have

93

An Instrument in God’s Hand

something to be thankful for.” Thanksgiving had only been a few days away when I spoke at the Mt. Zion Fellowship. Ruth arrived in Hong Kong on Thanksgiving Day. Her team met her with the news that, after waiting all those months, they had just gotten their Chinese visas. God’s timing is perfect, and His ways are awesome to behold! The team members had a wonderful Thanksgiving together in Hong Kong, before entering China.

Falling in Love

Not knowing anything about this situation with China, I was on my way home from Israel when the Lord spoke to me and said, “Go to China, and do it now.” I had been away from my practice for several weeks already, and this meant that my desk would be stacked high with paper work and my patient load would be unusually heavy on my return. It did not seem like a good time to take another trip, but I could not consider the circumstances. Nothing else mattered at the moment except obeying God.

As soon as I got back home, I went to work trying to get a visa into China. I tried and tried, but I could not seem to get a visa. Finally, I decided that I would just go on to Hong Kong and work on getting a visa there. If God had said for me to go to China now, He would surely make a way for me to get in. So I set off in the dead of winter for my first experience with China.

When I arrived in Hong Kong, I went immediately to the visa office and applied for a visa to the Mainland. After considerable effort, I was assigned to a group of eight English-speaking tourists with a tour guide, and was at last given the necessary visa. I was on my way.

Our guide took us across the southern Chinese border to Canton (now called Guangzhou) where the weather in January was similar to our Miami in winter. We wore light jackets and walked about in the markets with the sun shining brightly on us. It was delightful.

94

The Jerusalem Connection and My First Trips to China

The Chinese were all dressed in Mao jackets and pants, mostly in navy blue or gray, men and women alike. Everyone that was not walking was on a bicycle, as there were very few motorized vehicles. I had never seen so many people and so many bicycles in my life! After all, about one-quarter of the world’s population lives in China.

From this mild weather in the south, we flew to Beijing, which is more like Minnesota in the winter. The temperature was below freezing, and we were taken directly from the airport on a walking tour of the Forbidden City, with no opportunity to get out some heavier clothing from our luggage, which had been taken to the hotel in a separate vehicle.

The Forbidden City is like a walled city within a city where former emperors lived and from which they ruled. Their former mansions are now open to the public, replete with grand furnishings and displays of the silk embroidered gowns they wore. It is a place where anyone would be happy to spend many hours, and we did so that day, even in our frozen state.

Meals were served to us on a round, moveable platform in the center of the table, similar to our “lazy susans.” Each person had chopsticks to eat with. The same chopsticks were used to serve oneself from the center dishes, since no serving utensils were provided. After walking all day in the cold, many of our group got sick. This was compounded by the fact that there was no heat in the hotels or in any other public buildings. Since we all had to use our personal chopsticks to serve ourselves, we shared each other’s illnesses as well as the food. We were sick with a variety of upper respiratory and gastrointestinal ailments.

Some might be wondering how anyone could love such a place. The answer is simple: the Chinese people. Never in America or in any of my travels to other parts of the world had I ever seen such honesty and such childlike simplicity. There were no locks on the hotel doors. You could leave your gold jewelry or a stack of hundred-

95

An Instrument in God’s Hand

dollar bills on the table and not worry about it being stolen. The maids would pick it up, dust under it and carefully place it back where it had been.

Even though we did not speak the same language and could not communicate, you could sense the sweet humility of the people and their desire to make our stay a pleasant one.

Simple pleasures, like a little bird in a cage or a cup of very hot tea, would make these people happy and satisfy them. They did not need shopping malls with neon lights and three hundred kinds of athletic shoes to stimulate them and make them happy, as seems to be the case with some of us Westerners these days. They did not know such things existed. They were happy with a bowl of rice, a few vegetables, and being able to share these things with their families and friends. There were smiles all around.

Though possessions were meager among the Chinese people, their hearts seemed to overflow. I came to love the Chinese people more than I can describe. It seemed like God had put a piece of His heart inside of me and filled me with love for the Chinese people.

During the cultural revolution many of them had been imprisoned and many died, but the indomitable spirit of the Chinese people lived on. I have a Chinese woman working for me in Dallas, and when something difficult arises, she says, “I am Chinese, I can bear it.” It is an attitude that no matter what hardships are imposed on me, I will endure; I can take it; I will not crumble — and so the Chinese culture has been for thousands of years. Surely God must have had China in His hand, holding her up by His grace, for her to have survived so long through so much.

On that first trip, we were taken to the Great Wall of China. What an awesome structure! It was built over a period of several hundred years, beginning more than two thousand, two hundred years ago, and took the lives of many men in the process. It is about four thousand miles long, so long and so large that the Apollo II astronauts said it was the only man-made structure visible from space.

96

The Jerusalem Connection and My First Trips to China

As I climbed the steep steps to the wall and walked so far on it that no one else was around, the Spirit of the Lord came upon me to prophesy to that great nation. I stood facing south, overlooking most of China, and spoke the words of God out loud to the wind. I stated that there would be waves and waves of the Spirit that would sweep across the land, preparing her for the coming of Christ. I took a small rock from the Great Wall that day, and I still have it to remind me of that important moment in time.

It was still freezing cold in Beijing, and the full-length wool coat I had taken with me from Dallas was no match for the icy wind that cut through it as if it were made of chiffon. One day I went to a local department store in Beijing to look for something warmer to wear. I was the only blond, blue-eyed person most of the Chinese people had ever seen, and they would gather around me on the streets and just stare, like I had come from another planet. They

On the Great Wall of China, wearing the famous red silk jacket, January 1980.

97

An Instrument in God’s Hand

would speak excitedly to their children and point at me, like I was a rare, near-extinct African rhino in the zoo.

As I walked into the store that day and began to try on silk jackets, I had a huge crowd watching me — almost as if I were a coat model. Modeling had never been an aspiration of mine, but unwittingly, that is what I was doing. The crowd seemed especially amused when I bought a red jacket. Later I learned that the Chinese often wore red silk when they got married.

That red jacket had layers of finely-woven silk padding in it, and the wind could not penetrate it. It was, thankfully, very warm. From the day I bought it, the only time I took it off the entire time I was in China was to sleep at night. I was wearing that red jacket when prophesying on the Great Wall, and I wore it for almost twenty years off and on after I returned to Dallas. It became my favorite jacket of all times.

The food on the trip had been less than desirable. Those of us on the tour never knew for sure what we were eating, and we certainly did not want to ask. When you are sick, you don’t have much appetite anyway. Throughout the trip, however, we had been told that when we got to Wuhan we would have a wonderful banquet by a lake with a surprise delicacy. We had been looking forward to this wonderful meal in a picturesque setting for days.

Finally the day came, and we arrived in Wuhan. The lake was frozen, but we were still excited about what our special treat was to be. As we sat at the table, chop sticks in hand, waiting to attack this delicacy, a waiter brought out a big platter and set it in the middle of the table. On it was a large carp, cooked whole, with its head, eyeballs, tail and even its large scales, still attached. Over the fish had been poured a black sauce.

“How do you eat such a thing?” you might ask. Well, you take your chopsticks and grab a big bite of meat, skin, bones, scales and black sauce. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I believe deli-

98

The Jerusalem Connection and My First Trips to China

ciousness is in the taste of the eater, too. To some, this special kind of fish was a delicacy they could never have afforded. To others, it was something they did not even want to look at, much less eat. Culture and tradition do make a difference — sometimes a very big difference.

I came home full. My lungs were full of pneumonia, but, far more importantly and more enduring, my heart was full of love for the Chinese people. This was a love the Spirit would blow on, making the flames grow higher with time, creating a fire which could not be quenched.

The Dream

I made my second trip to China in the fall of that same year. This time I went with a small group, including Nora Lam and the astronaut, Jim Irwin. Because we were with the famous astronaut, we were given special treatment and got to stay at the beautiful State House in Beijing where the Chinese normally house visiting dignitaries. The weather was beautiful, the people were still smiling and sweet, and I fell deeper in love with China.

It seemed odd, therefore, when I did not go back to China for many years. Then, in March of 1994, I was invited by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences to go to Beijing and lecture on modern eye surgery. I wondered if they would want me to perform surgery.

This brought up another important question. Should I take my own instruments in case the hospital where I would be teaching didn’t have the instruments I needed? I was hesitant to take them. As I have described, my instruments for microsurgery are very delicate and expensive. If an instrument was not handled with care, it could be damaged, and it would cost me several thousand dollars to replace it.

Two friends would be accompanying me, Geri and Susan, both veterans of the mission field. I thought I might teach one of them

99